The Plaything of Life

She is a true friend whom I first knew on the benches of the institute, and I grew attached to her when she was not yet thirteen. I set about studying her closely, and found her calm without extremes, gentle except in the face of falsehood, frank to the farthest limits of frankness, and intelligent — but her intelligence has none of the leap of deceiving lightning; it is rather the conquering force whose effect on his feelings a person senses little by little, until, when it is about to master him, he yields and confesses his admiration for her.

And she holds to principles unknown among girls: her reverence for perfection; her worship of beauty — an absolute worship; her self-sacrifice for the sake of a goal she does not quite know — only she knows that she is driven toward it because it is noble — and she dreams of it night and day and seeks it with all the powers of a soul brimming with youth and full of faith...

At times she is the very fullness of life, all vitality and energy, as if she were joy leaping; at others she settles into silence and thought, as if she were killing despair; and at yet other times she wanders in the world of imagination, dancing to the songs of wishes, swaying to the hymns of hope, dozing off drunk on the chants of feeling.

And behold, youth in its overflow comes toward her open-handed, its lips parted in a coquettish smile...

But she takes toward it the stance of the stern tutor toward his rebellious pupil... and keeps at it until its lead comes easy in her hand; she curbs its impetuousness and walks, untrifling, toward the shining mirage, while the cries of the pursuers grow hoarse without her ever giving them her attention or turning aside toward them for a moment...

The years pass swiftly; trials pass over her violently; disasters cross her path gloating; and she tastes the two bitter things: injustice, and then darkness.

The first makes of her a rebel in revolt against all but plain truth... The second veils her eyes; but she carries on her struggle within her limited sphere until, having reached the end or nearly so, she can walk no farther and collapses in exhaustion, despair having done with her all that it can.

And even so — even as she flings out her judgments on life and people, clamorous and unjust — even as she mourns the refuge of girlhood and the innocence of childhood and the freshness of the past — even as she makes ready to fight to the last breath, without gentleness... and without avail... behold, a soft voice, tender and full of feeling, whispers in her ears a charming song, a blend of the breaths of hope, the splendor of art, and the freshness of sincerity; velvet fingers pass over her fevered brow; and behold, the world is another world she has never known — pain becomes a skilled refiner who tries a man to polish his soul — the wasted body regains the features of life and the glow of youth — and life becomes a chaste kiss on the mouth of a poet mad with love.

And so she loved him... but not as people love. She loved him because he was the first to understand how she ought to be loved; she loved him because she knew him only in lines that were lawful magic, everlasting in their effect; she loved him because he did not love her with crookedness in his heart or a motive in his soul — it was her inner beauty that was everything he admired, that captivated him and possessed his feeling; she loved him because behind this love there was no hope, nor the shadow of hope: he a Muslim and she a Christian, he bound by a sacred pledge, and she holding fast first to religion and second to duty. She loved him because he was the tender voice and she the echo, because he was the fragrant rose and she the dew; and she loved him, before all this, because she admired the thinking mind as he admired the delicate feeling and the virgin fidelity.

And she went on drinking from his limpid spring without quenching her thirst, until she let out from her lips the first cooing that chaste love had inspired in her; and when she recited it to me proudly I said, objecting and mocking:

— Do you suppose that life is nothing but song and cooing?

— Rather it wells up forever from this overflowing song.

— You are wrong, my friend. Life was never founded on rosy dreams and plaintive cooing and deceiving mirage and splendid inspiration... Life never was and never will be anything but this perpetual contention among its members for the preservation of their existence — nothing but this eternal struggle founded on the basis of matter.

— Matter? What a heavy, hollow, illusory word! Matter is only a means, my friend; it is no end. The end is joy; it is happiness; it is that calm a person feels when his conscience and his feeling are at rest... Call it what high ideals you will; we shall not miss the truth of the matter in naming it. As for the means, or the cause, it is, for example, this scramble that today dominates mankind from the farthest ends of the inhabited world to the nearest — a dominion in which lies its spiritual and moral ruin — because its people are ignorant of the true end, and so wander blindly in their error.

The days tumble past like tranquil clouds on the mild evenings of spring, and last night I receive in the mail an invitation card to a wedding. But whose wedding? Her wedding — hers — to a young man of means.

O mockery of fate!...

I hasten to her at once to shake her hand with the glee of the gloating victor; but when she appears before me with her wasted body, her quiet eyes, and her languid smile, I find this question stumbling on my lips in spite of me:

— And your worshipped young man??

— I have lost him, my friend, and with him I have lost everything... But do you know for the sake of what this sacrifice was made?

— ...?!

— For the sake of matter itself — the matter I so long mocked and loathed. Yes: for the sake of preserving my existence in a way that costs my dignity nothing, in which no shame or wrong can touch me if my guardian should depart this life and leave me to the tyranny of fate...

And I saw a tear glistening in the tormented eyes, and I cried encouragingly:

— Where is your pride, my dear...?

She answered, as though all the powers of the earth had gathered to move those two lips:

— This tear, my friend, is only one of those passing drops that come before the blowing of the storm. Tomorrow you will see how I shall send it forth as ringing cries in the ears of girlhood. You will see how I shall take this poor creature by the hand from the cradle, that she may trace the steps of her brother the boy and follow him to the very end. You will see, in the near future, how woman will do without man's help, if do without it she must. You will see how I shall raise her up a new creation, if Providence grants me to live long.

And I saw another tear glisten among the long lashes with a trembling in which I fancied I saw the flutterings of her spirit and the breathings of her heart; and I knew that this tear was not that one; and I knew that it would not dry until life had dried in her thin body; and I knew that the fates try those of understanding more than they try those of placid temper...